The difficult task of raising children post-COVID

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I once wrote about the existential complexities of being pregnant in the 2019 bushfires, as I sat at the epicentre of the smoke, a colour we locals called "apocalypse orange".

At that time, I found a way to make peace with having a child in a time of climate crisis; my son and I would visit the world as it is, not as it once was.

Just as I did when my mother was terminally ill, I reasoned, we would find beauty in the experiences we could have while they remained.

The clear blue sky when we can see it.

A bee feeding in the garden.

The sounds of a flock of native birds passing overhead.

"We, my child and I, will visit the world on its deathbed"; fading, though still here. Changed, but not without beauty.

So much has happened since I wrote those words.

The climate has kept unravelling.

I lost that child, and a friend carried my baby for me at the height of the pandemic.

I struggled through my own COVID-related illness for three years.

Until I find myself now, the mother of a two-year-old, negotiating both the challenges I envisaged back in 2019, and so much more.

We do all the things I imagined - we appreciate the blue of the sky and the sight of a bee. But we have other challenges ahead of us now too, that I could not foresee in fires.

We are a COVID cautious family, as I am unable to be fully vaccinated.

I parent in a world where the air is not just full of smoke each summer, but full of a virus that my doctors agree I very likely would not survive.

At the age of two, my son is also not vaccinated.

And as the evidence on the devastating impact of long COVID in children grows, I realise this question - this struggle for clear air - my family has faced since 2019 will likely continue for years to come.

My son may never know the innocence of not thinking about the air he breathes, whether that be for climate reasons or disease as we also see once "eradicated" illnesses like measles re-emerge.

How do you parent in this new world?

How do you prepare your child to thrive in this world?

These are questions I ask myself every day, and I'm sure many of you do, too.

The things people asked me as a child seem so obsolete; my husband and I don't say to each other "What do you think Gideon will be when he grows up?"

Instead, we ask "How do we make sure Gideon grows up without a life-limiting disability?"

"How do we make sure Gideon has the best chance surviving in a radically shifting climate?"

The first of these questions, for now, we have mitigated.

My son may never know the innocence of not thinking about the air he breathes. Picture Shutterstock

He attends the only officially COVID-safe childcare in the country, set up for children, or whose families, are at serious risk of the virus.

And we consider things we would have once never entertained - if we cannot find schooling with safe air, we will home school.

Even 2019 me, at the height of the fires when parents tried and failed to get air filtration in classrooms, would have laughed at the idea that I would ever be a parent who would consider home schooling.

Measuring worth as a parent

How do you prepare your child for an increasingly turbulent future?

This is a question many of us will be asking ourselves constantly in the years to come.

Personally, I was someone who was primed to parent for achievement.

I was raised by academics, I myself was a professor by my early 30s, and as a child I believed worth was measured in grades.

I was likely to go on to parent my own child in this way.

But after what I have experienced in the last five years, I do not, and have no intention, of parenting for achievement.

Instead, I do my best to parent for happiness, for kindness, and compassion.

In the bushfires I learnt it is your community that will save you in hard times.

I worked with colleagues and students to get masks to people sleeping rough, air purifiers to families with babies, while our governments sat idle.

It was people in my community that held and cared for my child and husband, when I was too ill to leave my bed for the first 18 months of our son's life.

Who dropped off meals and shopping while my husband changed nappies and cleaned baby bottles.

It was our community and friends who organised cars when ours was stolen.

Hosted online game nights, or took our dogs walking.

It was through my community, my social connections and friends, I found the answers and support to recover from my illness.

Without a community around you, these are isolating and distressing times.

I have come to learn that we need to pull our communities tightly around us, and if my son is going to live a happy, safe and fulfilling life, this is the skill he needs most.

Communities are the blanket that will protect you in uncertain times, and never more than when governments and institutions fail.

• Gemma Carey is a professor with UNSW. Her memoir No Matter Our Wreckage is published with Allen and Unwin.